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- has the DNRM explicitly made a statement on the validity of the
explicit permission from data.gov.au back then?

All you need is a basic understanding of the Australian system of
government. A federal bureaucrat does not have the authority to make
decisions about the licensing of a State owned dataset. But to confirm
someone could contact DNRM and ask the question.

> At the time the issue was rather hotly debated

That's putting it politely. There is a rather toxic stratum of
correspondence on talk-au around the period of the license change.

As I said earlier this is a can of worm and I have been deliberately
leaving the Contributors page alone and just keeping an eye on what
people are importing into OSM.